A Little History
My wife and I live in Florida. We've lived other places too, but Florida is home. She first came up with this domain name late one night as a joke. But ever since then more and more people use the term. People have always told me that, and it generally means something like "You can do that?, Man, I've been looking for someone who does that. You're a hard man to find!". I'm always as surprised as they are. I'm always thinking "Great, where were you when I was trying to make a living at it?".
This site was conceived to give people a chance to contribute and share ideas, information and resources on a wide variety of subjects. Originally, we had a small website set up to offer our services for Commercial and Graphic Art, Web Development, Photography and Custom Scripting. We were freelancers back then, and sought clients to support our business by promoting our web site. As a result, we had other “items of interest” housed on our site to attract users and demonstrate what we could do. The site got very popular, and we had some very dedicated regular visitors.
I enjoyed running the site, but as time went on and competition grew from all quarters, we decided that we needed to give up the Freelance lifestyle and go to work for larger companies in search of stability and better wages, etc. We ended up moving to North Carolina and I went to work for a couple different Dot-Coms up there. Notice that I used the plural “Dot-Coms”. That’s because two years in a row, at Christmas, both Dot-Coms failed and closed their doors still owing me money.
The first one I could forgive. This guy was trying really hard and just lost his funding at a bad time. He still owes me some cash, but I’m also still on good terms with him and would never try to squeeze him for it. Now the second company is another story entirely. This guy claimed to be such an upstanding member of the community, a Deacon at his church and a true visionary of all things web related. What a crock! This guy siphoned big bucks off of the business until it went under, and left his employees hanging for tens of thousands of dollars. While he was out on his luxury vacation with his family checking out high-end prep schools for his kid, our insurance company called to tell us he’d never paid the premiums and we had no coverage. When the rest of the money did run out, he forced the entire staff to stay on another two WEEKS without pay trying to get people to quit and then not be eligible for unemployment compensation. He also owed me well over thousands of dollars.
This guy was such a monster that I’ve had to dedicate a whole section of this site to documenting this bastard’s antics, so I won’t waste a lot of time here. Just suffice it to say, the Dot-Com solution didn’t pan out all that well for us. We needed to move again.
We moved back to Florida, where we’d come from in the first place, and settled in Tampa where jobs are easier to come by. Julie went to work for a big land developer, and I got a job in Government. This turned out to be a great move for me, because I’m still able to program, develop web sites and applications, create graphics, and I get all the latest technology training as a really nice perk. Now I’m certified in Cold Fusion, Advanced Cold Fusion, Acrobat, SQL, JavaScript, Java and lots of other good stuff too. Eventually, Julie saw what a sweet deal Govt. jobs are, and decided to come to work for Uncle Sam too. Between the stability, the reasonably good pay, and the ridiculous number of holidays, sick days and vacation time, it really has turned out to be a tasty gig. But still, the urge to create takes over every so often, and I need a place to let it all hang out when it does. That’s where this site comes in.
Here I am, a Commercial Artist, a Webmaster for the Govt., a Professional Photographer, a Software Programmer/Developer, an R/C Aircraft Builder/Instructor and Master Pilot, and also a full-scale General Aviation Pilot, all rolled into one. I AM a hard man to find. Add in the fact that I’ve moved 17 times since I got out of college, and I’m a REALLY hard man to find!
So here’s my site, enjoy the parts you are interested in and ignore the rest. If you are also a hard man to find and want some space here, send me an email and make your pitch. If I think it’s worthy I’ll host a small site here for you too, and you too can enjoy the prestigious aHardManToFind.com domain name and email address.
